The percentage of Americans reading for pleasure fell 40% from 2003 to 2023, according to a new study, published in the journal iScience, that relied on data from the American Time Use Survey. While that’s an alarming trend, especially for novelists and aspiring novelists, the number that stunned me was how few parents are reading to their children.
“The researchers also found that, while more than 20% of people surveyed had a child under 9 years old, only 2% of those surveyed read with a child—a finding that stayed largely flat throughout the study period but that could contribute to further declines in adult reading going forward, the researchers said.”
Our Favorite Children’s Books
As the parent who stayed home and worked remote part-time when our kids were young, I read to my boys all the time. But some books were more tedious than others to read for the 50th time. So, for parents and would-be parents who are looking for some great books, I wanted to share the books that we saved to read to our eventual (🤞) grandchildren.
The children’s books we’ve saved to read to our eventual grandchildren
You can see that we have a soft spot for the Elephant and Piggie book series by Mo Willems. You can pretty much pick one of those at random and be happy.
We’re also fans of Dr. Seuss, especially since we lived in Dr. Seuss’s hometown of Springfield when our kids were little. We routinely took our kids to Forest Park Zoo, where Dr. Seuss’s father was a curator. We also regularly drove past the factory that inspired the one in The Lorax.
A few other standouts for me were:
Press Here by Herve Tullet
Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri
The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen and Dan Hanna
Not a Box by Antoinette Portis
Bear in Love by Daniel Pinkwater and Will Hillenbrand
Stuck by Oliver Jeffers
The Book with No Pictures by B. J. Novak
Happy reading!
My wife Kate reading to our youngest, who’s now a teenager
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I’m a big fan of learning by doing, and an even bigger fan of iteration. Every time you do something, you have an opportunity to learn and do it better next time. I think this includes publishing, so I was disturbed by some recent advice I read that full-throatedly discouraged writers from even trying to query and publish their first manuscript.
The person went on to suggest that aspiring novelists also consider their second, third, and even fourth manuscripts as “practice.” The advice appeared particularly aimed at writers who are college-age and younger.
My takeaway was: Don’t rush into publishing. And don’t publish until you can get an agent. They’ll tell you when you’re ready.
While that advice has the musty smell of the top-down, old world oligarchy publishing hierarchy, I believe it comes from a place of wanting to protect young writers from potential failures that might stunt their future writing careers. While that’s an admirable sentiment, the traditional publishing industry’s track record of predicting success is, let’s say, mixed. But more than that, what’s wrong with risking failure?
In the business world where I spend my days, failure is rightly recognized as being valuable experience—sometimes more valuable than success. Aspiring novelists of all ages should embrace that kind of mindset for six important reasons:
1. Manuscripts are different from books.
Finishing a manuscript is not the same as finishing a book. The latter requires you to …
Work with beta readers
Work with editors (i.e., developmental editor, copyeditor, proofreader)
Write front matter (i.e., table of contents, dedication), back matter (i.e., acknowledgments), and jacket copy (i.e., book description, author bio)
Get a cover made
Yes, all of that takes time and some of it costs money—and I appreciate that not everyone has the ability to invest significantly in their book. However, doing all of that (to whatever degree you’re able) gives you valuable experience and skills you’ll be glad you didn’t wait to start obtaining.
2. Publishing isn’t the finish line.
Today, authors are expected to build platforms and it’s hard to do that if you’re not talking about the books you’re working on and following through to publication. Publishing builds credibility.
Authors are also expected to do publicity. I can tell you from firsthand experience that it is a learned skill. I remember vividly my first conference presentation—I was terrified, but got through it and got better through practice. Since then, I’ve spoken in front of audiences as large as several thousand people, and spoken across the US, as well as in England, Denmark, and Australia. (Europeans are a tough crowd.)
And even after all of that, I can tell you I’m extremely nervous about the prospect of doing publicity for my upcoming sci-fi trilogy. It’s going to be a whole new set of questions that I’m not used to answering. I’ll be exercising some new muscles, and it will take some training before those muscles are strong. Why put off building these muscles?
3. Success is in the eye of the beholder.
The chances are very good that the number of books sold that you’d be happy with and the number that a publisher or agent would be happy with are quite different. For perspective, during the Department of Justice v. Penguin Random House antitrust trial in 2022, it was revealed that 90% of published books sell fewer than 2,000 copies. Half of published books sell fewer than 12 copies. And that doesn’t include self-published books, which would surely bring those numbers down.
I’m not sharing that to lower your expectations, but rather to say that if you were to sell more than 2,000 copies, you should be thrilled. You’d be in the top 10%! But your agent and publisher might be less thrilled.
4. Nothing wrong with having a back list.
In the wake of his success with The Fault in our Stars, I had the pleasure of hearing John Green speak. He mentioned that his first book, Paper Towns, had sold less than 1,000 copies … that is, until the success of The Fault in our Stars. Today, by all measures, Paper Towns is a very successful novel. It just took Green breaking out with his second book to bring a larger audience to his first book.
Relatedly, some books fail to be picked up by agents or publishers because the genre is out of favor or the book doesn’t easily fall into a clear genre, not that the story isn’t good. Yes, you could stuff it in a drawer and wait for the right time to come along (which some authors do), or you can move forward and see what happens.
5. Book success goes beyond book sales.
It bears repeating: Publishing builds credibility. As I explained in a recent post, having a book out there opens doors, creates opportunities, and makes you more valuable.
6. You can protect yourself with pen names.
Fearful that your book may not be good enough and want to protect yourself? Use a pen name. Did you release a book under your name that tanked? Use a pen name for your next book. Plenty of authors use a pen name to disassociate themselves from a novel that didn’t do well. Rinse, repeat.
It took me a couple of decades to find my reason for writing and my voice, but I recognize that some people find their voices much more quickly. Why wait to get out there and share what you have to say?
Ultimately, if you’re proud of your novel and have the means, you should publish it. Hard stop. Learn from the experience and then do it again.
“You have to be willing to try. Which means you have to be willing to fail. Either way, you’re winning.”
I hope everyone takes that to heart.
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It’s easier than ever to make some money as a writer, and harder than ever to make a living at it. That’s why this book by Jane Friedman is so timely.
The Business of Being a Writer walks you through the economics of book publishing—from nonfiction proposals and fiction queries all the way through to marketing and promotion. That’s roughly the first half of the book.
The second half is about all the other things a writer will likely have to do to make ends meet. She talks about creating a business model for yourself and all the elements that might be part of that, including freelancing, crowdfunding, donations, paid newsletters, serials, teaching, grants, and more.
For anyone who dreams of making it as a writer, this is the truth-telling book you need.
I give it 5 stars, 16 dog-ears, and 2 Post-its.
For me, The Business of Being a Writer pointed out some new avenues and resources I wasn’t aware of. But more than anything, it confirmed what I was already pretty sure about, which is that very few people can make a living by writing books alone.
In fact, I don’t know any full-time book writers. (If you’re one, I’d love to know you.)
All the writers I know have at least one other job. That’s not to say that their books haven’t been successful. Some of them have been hugely successful, but often that success doesn’t come directly from book sales. Instead, their books often open the door to many other much bigger money-making opportunities such as:
Paid speaking
If you have a book, especially a nonfiction book, then you have a story to tell. That can get you in front of corporate and consumer audiences. The best example that I personally know of is Jay Baer, who’s the author of 7 books, in addition to founding six multi-million dollar companies. Most of his books included extensive speaking tours, where he’d speak at industry conferences and at large corporations—sometimes more than 100 a year. That exposure helped propel his other businesses, which included a consultancy.
Savvy pre-release marketing move: Jay schedules lots of speaking gigs right after the release of his books and waives his usual speaking fees in exchange for the event organizers pre-ordering books for all of their attendees. That produced huge pre-order sales, which instantly make his books New York Times bestsellers upon release.
Conferences
… like starting your own conference. That’s what Joe Pulizzi did. He founded The Content Marketing Institute and its flagship event, Content Marketing World. His seven books helped him earn the name the Godfather of Content Marketing. He’s since sold CMI and Content Marketing World and started a couple of new businesses, including a new conference, Content Entrepreneur Expo.
Ann Handley, a 3-time author and frequent speaker, also runs a conference, the B2B Forum. Like Jay and Joe, Ann knows how to dress to impress and tell a great story on stage.
University teaching
Being a published fiction author is almost a prerequisite for getting a creative writing teaching position these days.
Education & coaching
Today, there are lots of educational opportunities outside of academia. While I don’t know Jane Friedman personally, she’s a great example of this. In addition to her books, she speaks, runs in-person workshops and online classes, and has her own newsletter.
Consulting services
While education and coaching is for consumer clients, consulting is for business clients. In addition to Jay, 2-time author Kath Pay also runs a consultancy. Writing a book is almost a form of advertising for consultants.
A book is also a great business card. Two-time author and former agency owner Simms Jenkins once told me that he’d walk into a meeting with a new prospect and put his books on the table and it was an instant credibility booster.
Paid newsletters
Many writers have found success on Substack, Beehiiv, and other newsletter platforms. Among fiction writers, they’re writing about writing or sharing poetry, short stories, and serialized books. And among nonfiction writers, they’re typically writing about the subject matter area that their book is about, or about the subject of their next nonfiction book.
Once you’ve built up a large newsletter audience, events are the next much-more-lucrative step. This is something that some traditional media organizations are only just finding out. For instance, WBUR, Boston’s NPR station, held its first in-person multiday conference earlier this year to celebrate their 75th anniversary. It was so successful they’re making the WBUR Festival into an annual event.
Editing services
Some fiction writers smooth out the spikes in their novel writing income streams by offering developmental editing, copyediting, line editing, or proofreading services. Publishing successful books yourself builds your credibility as an editor, creating a virtuous circle.
For me, the notoriety from my email marketing books have made me much more desirable in the digital marketing industry as a subject matter expert, consultant, and speaker. Overall, the direct profits from my book sales represent probably only about a quarter of the value my books have created for me.
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In my day job as a marketer, I sometimes come across things that make me think marketing and book publishing aren’t so different. That happened recently while I was listening to the Future Commerce podcast, which had as their guest Rory Sutherland, the chairman of Ogilvy, one of the marque branding, advertising, and PR agencies.
He talked about the fragmentation of market segments into lots of smaller artisan brands. That sounds a lot like the rise of indie publishers and self-publishing.
He talked about brands co-creating products and content with their customers. That sounds like what happens in some author communities, on Substack with some serialized stories that are driven by reader feedback, and with some Kickstarter campaigns with tiers that bring funders into the story.
And he talked about how marketing is fat-tailed, saying, “10% of what you do delivers 130% of the value, but you don’t know what the 10% is in advance.” Now that sounds an awful lot like publishing—except the 10% figure is too high. We know from the Penguin Random House antitrust trial that just 4% of book titles account for the majority of publishing profits.
It’s an understatement to say there’s a fair amount of chance involved in success and, just as in R&D, you learn from your failures. Just today I was reading an interview in Agents and Books with Lindsay King-Miller, the author of This Is My Body, The Z Word, and Ask a Queer Chick, and she said, “Just because my first book didn’t launch my career like I hoped doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. … I made friends and connections and developed skills that I still use.”
I found that inspiring, and I hope any other inspiring novelists reading this do, too. I’m prepared to roll the dice a few times and see if I get lucky. I’m also prepared to learn from my mistakes and keep going. Whatever your dreams are, I hope you’re prepared to roll the dice and take some chances on yourself, too.
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I’m a member of the group that’s most bullish on generative AI and the group that’s the least. That’s because I’m a marketing strategist at a tech company by day and an aspiring novelist by night. The latest survey from Substack illustrates the extreme divide between these two groups.
Wearing both of these hats, here are major issues I see:
Anything created substantially using genAI can’t be copyrighted. (And if governments are smart, that will never change.) This is why agents and publishers want to know if you’ve used AI in your book, because it could potentially zero out the commercial value of your book. AI-generated images for covers are similarly problematic.
Using genAI opens you up to plagiarism lawsuits until the law gets settled here, which could take years. This is why some of our Fortune 1000 clients write into our agency service contacts that we can’t use genAI for any of the work we do for them. They don’t want the legal risk since they’re big legal targets already. The Big Five publishers surely feel the same way.
Of course, many writers feel genAI is morally wrong because it’s essentially a plagiarism engine. And their minds won’t change even if the courts rule that genAI’s use of copyrighted material is transformative (which is highly likely to happen).
But putting those feelings aside for a moment, let’s recognize that some genAI uses don’t run afoul of those two issues above because they’re noncommercial. For example, turning your human-authored book summary into social media posts to promote your book. Or creating AI-images of your protagonists based on the descriptions in your book to use on social. Or taking the short author bio you wrote for your jacket copy, adding a bunch of details, and having genAI draft a long bio for your website.
Let’s also acknowledge that genAI is a huge boon for people with dyslexia and ADHD, as well as non-native English speakers.
All of that said, I’ve made the personal decision not to use genAI in any way for the writing of my novels, including AI-infused editing tools like Grammarly. At the end of this very long road, for better or worse, I want to be able to take full credit (along with my editors and beta readers) for everything in my novels, including the human imperfections.
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Honestly, I didn’t give much thought to trying to get my nonfiction books traditionally published. Here’s why I self-published:
I’d worked at two book publishers, Texas A&M University Press and Marlowe & Co., so I was familiar with the publishing process.
I knew platform size is the primary determinant of nonfiction book success and that I already had a solid platform.
As a former managing editor at a magazine, I was confident in my page layout skills.
I knew Amazon had 70% of the book market, so being present in that one store would give me exposure to the majority of book buyers. (That made publishing through KDP a no-brainer.)
I knew self-publishing would be much faster.
I also knew I’d have much more control and already had a clear vision for the book.
Thankfully, all of those things turned out to be true. In less than a year, I was able to write the 214-page first edition of Email Marketing Rules, have it edited by some of my trusted industry friends, get it professionally copyedited, and publish it.
But there were additional benefits of self-publishing I didn’t realize until later. For example, a traditional publisher would have never allowed me to publish a 322-page second edition 18 months after the first edition. And they definitely wouldn’t have allowed me to publish a 677-page two-volume fourth edition.
Did all of those decisions maximize profitability? I’m sure they didn’t. But I don’t regret any of them, because those decisions capitalized on my excitement and allowed me to create books I’ve always been proud to put my name on.
Self-publishing gives you lots of control. Make sure you’re using it to maximize your vision.
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David Brooks’ New York Times article When Novels Mattered (link to gift article) is the latest salvo against the declining relevance of fiction, and in particular literary fiction. He blames this decline on the popularity of genre fiction, the rise of the internet, M.F.A. programs, and ultimately (and predictably) on liberal politics. My two cents is that only one of those events had a significant impact on shaping the current literary marketplace.
The internet-driven collapse of the monoculture
In the mid- to late 20th century that Brooks idealizes, media was tightly controlled by a relatively small number of institutional players. And then came the internet. Web 1.0 shook the monoculture, but Web 2.0 destroyed it.
Streaming completely undid TV, which also competes with YouTube and TikTok. What remains of radio competes with streaming services and podcasts. News organizations compete with individuals and corporations and social media at large—a transition I have witnessed and experienced first hand as a journalist, then blogger, and then brand journalist and content marketer. And, of course, traditional book publishers now compete with self-publishing—another anti-establishment trend I have happily participated in. Because of their tremendous costs, movies are the last bastion of monoculture (which is why we’re seeing yet another Superman).
The consequence of all this new competition is that there are far fewer mega-hits in every medium, not just in books. At the same time, our culture is much richer and much more representative than it was 40 years ago. The democratization of media has been a wonderful thing. The pie is not only bigger, but way more people have gotten a slice of it. That’s good for creators and even better for consumers.
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